FROM THIS EPISODE

This coming Sunday, Venice Boulevard Westbound will be free of cars from downtown Los Angeles to Venice Beach from 10 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon. It's another CicLAvia, designed to encourage commuting by bicycle in the car capital of the world. We visit a city that really makes way for pedal power by physically separating bicycle traffic from cars, trucks and buses. Could what happens in Rotterdam, Holland happen here? We also talk with the organizer of CicLAvia and the author of a book that’s relevant to LA.

On our rebroadcast of today's To the Point, nobody yet knows if the Boston Marathon bombing was the work of al Qaeda, a right-wing militia, a deranged individual or somebody else. We hear from the President's emotional memorial speech today and talk with a variety of people with different ways of thinking about the tragedy in a cloud of continued uncertainty.

In the aftermath of Monday's Boston Marathon bombing, nobody can ignore the issue of crowd safety. As we've heard, Sunday's CicLAvia could draw upwards of 100,000 people stretched over a distance of 15 miles. Lieutenant Andy Neiman is a spokesman for the LAPD.

CicLAvia has become a recurring feature of life in LA with the latest scheduled for this coming Sunday. We hear about the 123 miles of new bikeways Los Angeles
is "installing," and the Department of Transportation's plans for another 200
miles a year for the next five years. Are they making Los Angeles more "bike friendly?" We hear what to expect about Sunday and from a metropolis that's committed to making the bicycle part of everyday life. (Roger Rudick put his Rotterdam story together as part of KCRW's Indpendent Producer Project.)